July 2004 Newsletter

I'm sure you must have come across words that are very difficult or impossible to translate into a different language. Today Translations.com have carried out a survey amongst translators worldwide to find the top 10 untranslatable foreign words & the top 10 English words. Here are their results:

1. ilunga [Tshiluba word for a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time; to tolerate it a second time; but never a third time. Note: Tshiluba is a Bantu language spoken in south-eastern Congo, and Zaire]

3. radioukacz [Polish for a person who worked as a telegraphist for the resistance movements on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain]

4. naa [Japanese word only used in the Kansai area of Japan, to emphasise statements or agree with someone]

Interesting lists. Might well make a nice springboard into translation considerations for advanced learners.

This month Mandy Jore introduces us to Eurolta - a certificate for language teachers in Europe, Qing Gu examines English language teaching in China, Emma Worrall gives us a glimpse of the course planning process & Tanju Deveci offers an introductory lesson on collocation. Many thanks to all four for their contributions.

We're continuing the publishing of postings from the Forums. We hope they give you a chance to see the kind of topics covered & the interest to go to the Forums & reply to the postings.

If you or a friend is comtemplating a CELTA course in the near future, one of our advertisers, the British Language Centre, is giving a huge 25% discount on August, September & October CELTA courses, from now onwards, if you mention this newsletter. Check out their ad below.

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EUROLTA - The European Certificate in Language Teaching to Adults by Mandy Jore

Bridging Belief Gaps in ELT Teacher Education in Cross-cultural Settings by Qing Gu

This article was partially published in the sent newsletter - to read the article

In 'Course Planning - a process' by Emma Worrell, Emma offers us the chance to see how the process really works & as a result how important this stage is to successful teaching.

Level: Pre-Intermediate
Length of Lesson: 50 minutes
Type of Lesson: Lexis-Collocations

Main Objectives:
By the end of the lesson students will have:
a - been encouraged to notice some collocational usages of the words 'make', 'do' and 'have' in a written (in the form of a letter seeking for advice)and recorded dialogue by listening to the conversation first and then reading the typescript.
b - recorded these collocations on a worksheet provided by the teacher.
c - practiced using these collocations in context by writing sentences about themselves or their family members.

Subsidiary Objectives:
By the end of the lesson students will have had some practice on listening for specific information.

ARTICLES - If you've given a course or seminar or have a lesson plan & would like to give it a public airing, get in touch.

ADVERTISING - We reach a few thousand teachers every week with the Weekly Teaching Tip & the same each month with the Newsletter, not to mention the 1000+ unique visitors a day to the site. If you've got a book, course, job…anything that you'd like to advertise, then do get in touch.

No ordinary Master's: become an action researcher with Aston University's MSc in TESOL Aston University Language Studies Unit:

Mary:
I've been in Greece for one year now and am finding the employment situation more and more frustrating. I moved here because my husband's job brought him to Athens for a couple of years. I finished DELTA in June and will be getting the results in August. Before moving here we lived in Sicily where things are certainly not perfect, but compared to Greece it now seems like paradise. The pay is awful and native speakers don't get a look in. The quality of teaching also seems to be very low. Anyone out there with similar experience or am I just unlucky?
http://foro.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=450

Sam:
Please, could someone suggest a task to help students with vocabulary after reading a text? To develop reading for gist skills, do you think the only way is to give a set of general questions? And only t/f questions for fast reading technique?
http://foro.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=424

Pc_angel:
I think this is a problem that many teachers are facing -- students using SMS abbreviations in place of words and phrases. Other than circling such SMS text and reminding students not to use such text in their writing, is there some other approach to stop this.
http://foro.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=443

Ziggy Stardust:
I have been teaching English in Korea to children for 3 years. I have a problem that I have never been able to resolve. This problem is giving instructions. Now, when I have a class for some time, they eventually get accustomed to what I am after but when I am asking them to do something new I could spend the entire class trying to explain to them what to do and we don't get to the planned activity at all sometimes. I know someone is going to suggest that I be as direct and as simple as possible to avoid any possible confusion. I do.
Now I am teaching on the internet and the problem has become more acute since my ability to use body language, gestures and demonstrations is even more limited. This is very frustrating. I had very little problem instructing Spanish adults but Korean students of any age have been a nightmare for me this way.
Does anyone have a similar experience that they have overcome somehow (especially those who have taught in Korea or other East Asian countries)? How did you do it? I'd also like to hear from those who have had similar problems on the internet.
http://foro.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=438

Lottan:
Annette Margolis writes in "Newly qualified teachers need a strong dose of the real world" (The Guardian Weekly, May 20th, 2004) that there is a over belief among TEFL-teachers holding the precious CELTA or other recognized TEFL diploma of their own competence. She also presents a number of the potholes a newly qualified TEFL-teacher risks falling into. My husband is one of the privileged ones. After doing a degree in Nordic languages and linguistics, he signed up and paid a lot of money to do a 5 week course with 6 hours of classroom practice. Then he applied for, and got a post in Sweden, teaching mainly adults in evening classes communicative English to get them by on their holidays.
He soon found it rather frustrating, never to be able to go deeper into the intriguing parts of language learning and applied for a post at a council run 6th form, where his CELTA at first was not recognized as being enough. After 7 years of being the only native speaker at the school he was finally recognized as being qualified enough and got offered a permanent post by an exception of the rules put up by the government and unions.
I started my teaching degree in 1997 by doing two full years of English for teaching purposes. The level of English taught in Swedish schools is generally very high, since all children study the language from the age of 9, many before that, and therefore of course the level of the English courses at university is quite high as well. Apart from the obvious theoretical courses in grammar, vocabulary, language history, text analysis and literature, we also got to study curriculum design, evaluation of teaching materials, methods of teaching English in an historical context and of course classroom management in theory and practice. During my 5 years at university I had 6 weeks of supervised work experience at a 6th form school, evaluated and discussed in seminars with experienced teachers and my tutors at college. I also did two years of Swedish and comparative literature before getting my Master's degree in upper secondary
teaching.
The summer before my last year I got a job as a TEFL teacher in Cambridge. The condition was that I did not mention the fact that I was not a native speaker, since the school advertised as only having native speaking teachers, but obviously my spoken level of English was such that my employers thought that I was going to manage. And I did. My colleagues appreciated the job I did, and my course director was very happy. So was I; I liked the job, and I felt well prepared for it by my university course.
Now, after another two years working full time as an English and Swedish teacher at a Swedish 6th form, we decided to move over to England, the land of milk and honey for overseas teacher at the moment. That is, if you hold a CELTA or equivalent. Employers don't look twice if you don't have it, if they don't give the course themselves. Then they are only too happy to offer it at your great expense. A few language schools that I have been in contact with after they have refused my application agree that it seems rather silly having to do a 5 week course after having done a Master's in teaching English (as a foreign language), but the CELTA is apparently a mark of quality. Even the funded schools teaching immigrants Basic Skills demand the TEFL qualifications, even though they are not directed especially towards teaching adults or basic literacy, work that I have experience of. I can fully understand if the state schools are a bit doubtful
about a foreign speaker's ability to teach British children English, how ever proficient the teacher might seem. At least they recognize the degree! But it seems, in my view, rather snobbish and a great waste of resources not to let well qualified and experienced teachers in. The only reason I can see is that employers are afraid that the pay would rise if they did. So, it is not only the overseas TEFL teachers who have this tunnel vision, so have the employers.
http://foro.developingteachers.com/viewtopic.php?t=449

Lots of different Forums to choose from. Post your jobs, your CV, your questions, finds on the net, ideas, activities, questions, grumbles, suggestions, your language courses, your training courses…they are there for you to use.
http://foro.developingteachers.com/

1st - Canada Day
International Joke Day
4th - US Independence Day
14th - French Bastille Day
Tour de France bicycle race

This month we've got a review of 'Meanings and Metaphors: Activities To Practise Figurative Language' by Gillian Lazar (CUP).

BUYING BOOKS?
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- Noising It Up - using background noise with listenings
- Lexicheck - considerations when teaching vocabulary
- A Place to Call Home - lesson ideas for World Refugee Day
- Ctrl + v, Ctrl + c - lesson ideas around an article about plagiarism at universities.

CAMBRIDGE CERTIFICATE IN ELT - CELTA
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